1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an electronic mail transceiver apparatus in an electronic mail system, and more particularly to the transmission of electronic mail in a voice message form in the electronic mail system.
2. Description of Related Art
Generally, a message handled in electronic mail is text data in many cases. However, there is the strong demand to handle voice data in an electronic mail system and an electronic mail system is recently developed in which voice data is inputted from a telephone, as disclosed in Japanese Laid Open Patent Disclosure (Heisei 3-99543).
The electronic mail system disclosed in the above reference is shown in FIG. 1 and includes a mail storage switching apparatus 101 which is composed of a message input/output processing section 102, a mail terminal access processing section 103, a message storing section 104, a correspondency table storing section 105, and a mail box 106. The electronic mail system further includes telephones 112 and 114 and a mail terminal equipment 116. The correspondency table storing section 105 stores a correspondency table in advance. The correspondency table is a set of mail terminal identifier and telephone number provided for each mail terminal equipment.
In such an electronic mail system, when a voice message is to be issued, a user first operates the mail terminal equipment 116 to transmit a message producing request to the mail storage switching apparatus 101. In response to the message producing request, the mail storage switching apparatus 101 searches the correspondency table for a set of mail terminal identifier and telephone number of the request issuing terminal equipment. Then, the mail storage switching apparatus 101 issues to the message input/output processing section 102 an input processing request of a voice message to be inputted from a telephone 112 having the searched telephone number. In response to the input processing request, the message input/output processing section 102 awaits a call from the telephone 112 having the searched telephone number by the user of the request issuing mail terminal equipment 116. When receiving the call, the message input/output processing section 102 acquires the voice message form the telephone 112 and stores the voice message with a message identifier assigned thereto in the message storing section 104. At the time when the acquisition and storage of the voice message is completed, the message input/output processing section 102 sends the message identifier of the stored voice message to the mall terminal access processing section 103 which transmits the message identifier to the request issuing mail terminal equipment 116 as the message producing result. In this manner, the voice message can be handled in the electronic mail system.
However, in the above conventional electric mail system, the mail storage switching apparatus 104 is connected to the telephones 112 and 114 and the mail terminal equipment 116. In order to input a voice message, the user needs to operate not only the telephone 112 but also the mail terminal equipment 116. That is, in the conventional electric mail system, a set of personal computer as the mail terminal equipment and telephone needs to be provided for each user so that numerous investment is necessary for the electronic mail system for a voice message. In addition, there is another problem in that the user cannot execute electronic mail transmission from another place where the personal computer as a mail terminal equipment is not located.